INTRODUCTORY NOTE	37
number of Armenians, Gregorian and United^ actually resi-
dent in or near the Holy City amounts only to about twelve
hundred. In other parts of the land^ exclusive of the extreme
north, there may be found about four thousand more. The
picturesquely situated Monastery of B'zummar became a
centre for the Armenian Catholics, who fled to the Lebanon
from government persecution in Aleppo about the middle
of the nineteenth century, being for some time the residence
of their chief, styled the Patriarch of Cilicia.1 This digni-
tary now resides at Constantinople.
Of the five Eastern churches which claim our attention
in Syria and Palestine proper, the Maronite is the strongest
numerically, with about thirty-six per cent of the total Chris-
tian population of about nine hundred thousand, but the
Greek Orthodox Church follows closely with about thirty-
four per cent.2 The Greek Catholic communion has less
than half as many followers as the Greek Orthodox. Sub-
tracting the Latins or Roman Catholics and the Protestants,
who, taken together, amount to several thousand, the rest of
the Christian inhabitants, amounting to about five per cent
of the whole number, is divided between the Jacobites or
Old Syrians and the Syrian Catholics, with some nineteen
thousand of the former and some twenty-four thousand of the
latter. The Greek Orthodox are spread all over Syria and
Palestine; the Greek Catholics are strongest in Central Syria;
the Maronites are largely concentrated in, the Lebanon and
in Beyrout; while the Syrians (both Jacobite and Catholic)
are mainly confined to northern Syria.
These five churches have many things in common, both
among themselves and with Rome. From a Protestant
point of view, these matters in which there is agreement
1	See "Mount Lebanon," vol. I, pp. 22 and 93, by Colonel Churchill
(London, 1853).   "The Turkish Empire/7 vol. II, p. 147, by E. R. Mad-
den (London, 1862).
2	These statistics, based on Baedeker's list (edition of 1906), should be
taken with caution, as should all the greatly varying estimates of the
population of Syria and Palestine, their being no scientific government
census for these lands.    The figures, however, probably indicate with
approximate correctness the relative numerical strength of the various
Christian bodies*